Controllers for printers control how, in which order and with which properties images are processed by a printer. The processing of the images includes at least the actual printing, that is the application of a marking medium such as ink onto a substrate such as paper. As images vary in size while the medium is often of a standard format, for example a roll of a substrate in a roll-to-roll printer, often multiple images are processed, in particular printed, simultaneously to increase efficiency of the printing.
For example, a nesting logic may be provided as part of a controller of a printing system which are configured to nest multiple images, of the same or even of different print jobs, to arrange them most efficiently on a substrate. Such nesting may be based on criteria such as saving printing time, saving marking medium, saving substrate and/or on priorities given to the individual images.
Nesting in this context means taking a plurality of individual images and arranging at least some of them side-by-side in a direction perpendicular to the direction the roll of recording medium is moving. In addition, gaps left by e.g. some larger images on the recording medium roll may be filled by one or more smaller individual images, thus reducing the amount of recording medium used for printing the larger and the smaller images compared to printing them one after the other along the recording medium roll.
Nesting therefore contributes to reduce the amount of the recording medium needed by fully utilizing both the length of the recording medium (along the direction the recording medium is moving) and the width of the recording medium (perpendicular to that direction of moving).
Print jobs, which comprise at least one image and optionally data relating to properties of the at least one image and/or to settings with which the images are to be printed, are always presented as a list to be processed one after the other. Accordingly, it is very difficult for a user wishing to modify or abort a certain print job, to understand if this is possible at the moment and what the results of such modifying or aborting will be when the printer is currently processing, in particular printing, multiple images, or print jobs, simultaneously.
As a typical example, the user may send an abort command in order to stop printing of an image A shown in the print queue list as currently active. However, by sending the abort command, the user may when sending the abort command, abort all printing of the printer at once so that also the printing of image B (which the user did not want to abort) is interrupted, potentially wasting expensive marking material and/or recording medium.